25 April, 2011

Easter is Hope

The Barefoot Baklesa always had an opinion about a certain solitary image of a female saint in my mother's hometown that doesn't join the Easter Sunday morning procession and ritual called the Salubong, or locally known in Kinaray-a as Sugat. For the non-Filipino reader,the Sugat or Salubong is a uniquely Filipino practice that re-enacts the meeting of the Resurrected Christ and the Blessed Virgin Mary from certain apocryphal traditions. It's an outdoor activity that happens before first light of Easter morn, when children dressed as angels sing the story of Easter, highlighted by the meeting of the images of the Virgin Mary and the Risen Christ, the former removed of her black veil of mourning and crowned gloriously. My point rather, after over-explaining again, is that the procession of Easter morning is probably the most important of the holy week processions -and to miss it, would defeat the point of why we celebrated Lent in the first place. Now, in some towns, they don't really require the solitary images to come out for the Salubong, but not in my Mother's hometown.

There's something magical about waiting for the sun to rise on Easter Morning, and I would not miss it for anything. While the rest of Gay-dom have been baking in the sun at Boracay and the hedonistic capital of Gay Philippines called Puerto Galera, the Barefoot Baklesa chooses to spend his Easter differently. Hehehehehe!!!

As we had our family breakfast after taking home Saint Mary of Bethany from the church, we felt Easter in the smiles and raucous laughter that rang through the house. My grandmother, turning 94 in a few days, had the best smile in the house; and that was worth more than any beach retreat.